News Currents

WAR IN THE GULF US military officials claimed Saturday that a fifth of Iraq's tanks and ground artillery weapons had been destroyed in 24 days of relentless bombing.... In Moscow, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said allied bombing attacks were threatening to exceed what the United Nations foresaw in its resolutions allowing a US-led coalition to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.... Egypt's interior minister said in an interview published Saturday that police have arrested 17 pro-Iraqi terrorists who confessed to plotting to assassinate Egyptian officials.... A bomb exploded on a railway in western Austria meant to be used to transport American tanks from Germany to the Gulf. No injuries were reported.... Angered over King Hussein's political support for Iraq, US State Department officials said Friday the US will hold up about $75 million in foreign assistance already appropriated for Jordan.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

The Angolan government pledged Saturday to go ahead with political reforms toward a multiparty state despite the failure of the latest round of peace talks with UNITA rebels.... In South Africa, police arrested 11,361 people for crimes ranging from murder to drunken driving during a 10-hour countrywide sweep over the weekend.... Meanwhile, in the nominally independent Ciskei homeland, South African troops helped officers loyal to military ruler Oupa Gqozo foil a takeover Saturday.... Sudan's military ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir, turning Africa's largest country into a federation in a bid to end civil war, has named Army officers as governors of nine newly created states.... Lebanon's Syrian-backed Army, in the widest deployment in southern Lebanon since 1976, has taken up positions in several villages as warring Shiite Muslim militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas yielded military power.

The Soviet republic of Lithuania voted Saturday to restore its pre-World War II independence, with preliminary returns showing 90.5 percent of those taking part in favor of independence.... In Yugoslavia, talks on halting the nation's slide toward possible civil war collapsed Friday with a boycott by Croatia and a walkout by the Slovenian president who said he will demand the opening of talks on the total ``dissolution'' of the multi-ethnic federation.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

In Colombia, left-wing rebels pushed on with a fierce offensive that killed 12 guerrillas and two soldiers, despite conditionally accepting direct peace talks, authorities said Saturday. Two rebel groups carried out scores of attacks last week to protest their exclusion from a national assembly to reform Colombia's constitution. Haiti's legislature Saturday debated whether to approve President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's choice for prime minister, a bakery owner who lacks any government experience, but led a political opposition group.